Navy’s largest warship our ‘most potent disaster relief asset’
It is designed for wars – but Australia’s largest navy vessel has now set off on a very different mission that’s much closer to home.
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It is huge. It is a floating airfield for a fleet of helicopters. It carries dozens of vehicles and the smaller boats needed to deliver them to shore. HMAS Adelaide is the most potent disaster relief asset Australia can offer.
Reservists are assembling aboard the Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) assault ship to spearhead an escalation in the battle against catastrophic fires and deliver urgent disaster relief.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the mobilisation of the force “to bring every possible capability to bear by deploying army brigades to fire affect communities”.
ADF Chief General Angas Campbell painted a picture of what to expect: “The announcements today see a lift in our naval on-water presence … an increase in the number of aircraft and helicopters operating in affected areas involving Chinook helicopters, multi-role helicopters, light liaison helicopters, as well as P-8 surveillance aircraft, C-17, C-130 and C-27-J transport and lift aircraft.”
At its heart will be one of Australia’s largest warships, HMAS Adelaide.
TASK FORCE FIRESTORM
HMAS Adelaide and her sister ship HMAS Canberra are the pride of the Royal Australian Navy.
But critics say these huge amphibious assault ships were built to fight the last war.
Their precursors were incredibly useful in the island-hopping campaigns of World War II. But things were simpler then.
In an era of swarms of supersonic missiles, near-silent submarines and ultra-long-range bombers, they risk being floating coffins for thousands of troops. Their survival is dependent upon a handful of defensive weapons carried by their few escorts.
Such is the threat to these big, valuable ships that the new commander of the US Marine Corps last year declared he wants to scrap them.
But their day is not done yet.
They remain immensely useful ships.
They can operate where there are no deepwater ports. They can deliver and recover people and vehicles from shore. They have on-board hospitals. They have accommodation facilities for hundreds.
And they are immensely flexible.
FLOATING RELIEF CENTRES
HMAS Adelaide carries an enormous array of facilities that can be adapted to respond to almost any disaster.
It displaces 27,500 tonnes, is 230m long, can move at a maximum 21 knots (38.9km/h) and can travel 16,600km without having to refuel.
Costing about $1.5 billion, HMAS Adelaide is much bigger and more capable in almost every respect over HMAS Choules, which featured so prominently in pulling 1000 people off Mallacoota beach in Victoria this week.
HMAS Adelaide has an on-board medical facility which is better equipped than many regional hospitals.
It has six spaces on its vast deck to recover and launch helicopters concurrently.
It has internal parking for up to 110 vehicles, and four small landing craft to carry them.
It can comfortably accommodate 1100 troops with all their combat equipment.
Equally important, HMAS Adelaide has extensive communications and command facilities from which to co-ordinate large scale, complicated operations.
Australia’s navy has gathered extensive experience in using its landing helicopter dock in disaster relief.
In 2019, HMAS Adelaide visited the Solomon Islands to test its capabilities with New Zealand in exercise Render Safe.
In 2016, HMAS Canberra’s very first operational mission was to rush relief efforts to Fiji after Cyclone Winston. It carried hundreds of tons of emergency supplies, 350 army engineers to help repair vital infrastructure, and a fleet of earthmoving vehicles and heavy equipment. These were delivered to wrecked wharves and remote beaches by the ship’s landing craft. Meanwhile, heavy-lift helicopters carried emergency supplies to remote and cut-off communities.
No doubt, this can – and will – be done again.
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
The Australian Defence Force’s disaster relief capabilities are currently about as good as they can be with its existing force structure.
The navy now has at least one ship ready to meet its Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) requirements.
It wasn’t always so.
The emergency conversion of a civilian catamaran ferry, HMAS Jervis Bay, and the by then antique HMAS Tobruk, was the only means by which our military was able to intervene in the 1999 East Timor crisis.
The embarrassing “rustbuckets” HMAS Manoora and Kanimbla – converted from surplus US amphibious tank carriers – were scrapped early because of structural failures. But not before making vital contributions to Pacific relief operations – and the aftermath of the Banda Aceh tsunami in 2005
Things are better now.
The two new Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ships were declared fully operational in November after four years of training, exercising and fault rectification.
“The LHDs have not only played key roles in Navy’s enhanced regional activities … but also functioned as key enablers for the multinational Exercise Talisman Sabre, projecting forces ashore by air and sea. They have recently achieved Final Operating Capability, and we can now say we are one of the world’s premier amphibious forces,” Fleet Commander, Rear Admiral Jonathan Mead declared last month.
They join HMAS Choules, the former British HMS Largs Bay, as our largest warships and frontline disaster relief assets. Choules was bought as an emergency stopgap measure after the navy admitted an embarrassing capability gap when it was incapable of assisting relief efforts in Queensland after Cyclone Yasi in 2011.
DEFENCE’S CHANGING CLIMATE
“Climate change is predicted to make disasters more extreme and more common,” Australia’s Defence Chief Angus Campbell warned a government gathering last year.
“Deploying troops on numerous disaster relief missions, at the same time, may stretch our capability and capacity. Defence may also be increasingly called upon to support stabilisation, governance or peacekeeping activities.”
As a result, things may need to change.
Australian Army logistics expert Colonel Bradley Robertson last year presented a paper warning our defence force is not ready for the challenges ahead.
“The climate is changing, and Defence is not prepared for this reality,” he writes.
“The vast majority of scientific evidence supporting a changing climate indicates that the effects for the next century are already set.
“It is therefore essential that Defence understands the direct effects of Climate Change on military capabilities and develops an appropriate adaptive response.”
Those changes will have a severe impact on civilian operations and infrastructure. But also the way forces fight.
“Although humanitarian operations and infrastructure are important security considerations, the debate has focused on externalising the problem and not forcing the military to critically examine its capabilities through the prism of the complex and rapidly approaching changes to climate.”
In essence, heightened temperatures, more intense and frequent storms, changing winds, increased ocean acidification and higher UV levels – to name just a few – will also “adversely impact Defence capability”.
Not to mention the pressures of greater demands.
Originally published as Navy’s largest warship our ‘most potent disaster relief asset’